When we look at the list of things in the Book of Proverbs that we’re told are hateful to God, it’s no surprise that we find there, hands that shed innocent blood. But whilst it isn’t a surprise to find that in that list, what Proverbs says does pose us a question. If God hates hands that shed innocent blood, does that means it’s acceptable to shed the blood of those who aren’t innocent, to shed the blood of the guilty? 

For many people and for some societies, the answer to that has been, and still is, ‘Yes’. We know that some people and societies agree with the death penalty for murder, cutting off the hands of thieves and such like, and in fact, those people could point to scriptural authority to do that because among the things we read in the Book of Leviticus is this,

If anyone injures his neighbour, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. Whoever kills an animal shall make it good, and whoever kills a person shall be put to death. 

And we only need to read the Old Testament to see that this idea was very much the way the people of ancient Israel believed things should be. In fact, some people would say that the Old Testament should come with a warning to anyone who reads it because of the often blood-thirsty, vengeful nature of what we read in its pages. But, whilst some people would agree that this is the way to treat those who are guilty of crimes, it poses a real difficulty for us as Christians because it seems to run contrary to the teaching of Jesus.

If we read that part of St Matthew’s Gospel that we know as the Sermon on the Mount, we find quite a lot of teaching that warns us against acting in the way that Leviticus says we should. Jesus tells us,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Then a little later he says,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

And yet a little earlier Jesus had said that hadn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfil it. So how can Jesus say this and yet, almost immediately afterwards say things that seem to contradict the law? The answer I think, lies in our understanding of justice and judgement, and guilt and innocence.

When we speak about ‘justice’, what do we really mean? Ideally, justice is about treating all people fairly and equally and doing the right thing by them. And in terms of a case where some wrong has been committed, it’s about offering some kind of compensation to the victim and giving a penalty to the offender. Judgement is about knowing what justice requires, about knowing what the right compensation and penalty should be. But, in reality, there’s always a danger that what we mean by seeking justice, in fact, means looking for revenge. This is perhaps especially true of individuals rather than the law itself, and I think this is the problem Jesus is really speaking about in these passages of Scripture, the problem of individual people looking to exact revenge on those who have, or who they think have, wronged them.

Later in St Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells us,

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” 

And seeing the faults of others but not our own, seeing what they’ve done wrong but not what we’ve done wrong is something we’re all very good at isn’t it. But that means that we have to be very careful when it comes to speaking about guilt and innocence. Are any of us truly innocent? Can any of us truly say that the things we’d punish others for, we’ve never done ourselves? We might, for example, agree that thieves should have their hands cut off, but have we never stolen anything ourselves? We might not have robbed a bank or broken into anyone’s house and taken their property, but have we never taken anything we weren’t entitled to? How many of us, for example, have left work early or taken an extended tea or lunch break? But, when we’ve done that and yet still received a full day’s pay for less than a full day’s work, have any of us ever given back to our employer the money they paid us for time we haven’t spent working for them? Should we then have our hands cut off too? So we have to be very careful not to judge the guilt of others and take revenge on them before we’ve considered whether we’ve ever been guilty of the same thing we’re condemning them for.

And we have to be careful too, to make sure we know exactly what we mean when we talk about shedding blood. In one sense that’s easy to understand, we shed blood when we do physical harm to another person. But there are more ways of shedding someone’s blood than just that. But something else we read in the Book of Leviticus is this,

For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life.

So to shed blood is to take, or harm, the life of the one whose blood is shed. That’s obvious when it comes to the actual shedding of blood, but we can harm people’s lives in other ways than just shedding their blood in a physical sense can’t we? So we can shed someone’s blood, we can harm them and their lives, without actually making them bleed.

One way we very often do this is through our words. We can say all sorts of terrible things about people, we can blacken their name and cause a lot of harm to them and to their lives by doing that. A person may well be guilty of an offence against us but one way we very often do take revenge for that is by telling other people what they’ve done (and very often exaggerating what they’ve done into the bargain). In that way, we can cause people who’ve offended us to be treated as guilty by people to whom they’ve done no harm whatsoever. We call blackening people’s name in this way character assassination don’t we? And that’s a very good name for it because, when we do this, what are we doing but shedding someone’s blood, harming their life by killing their reputation? And if we think about the harm we can do through our words as shedding blood we can make sense of the very severe punishment Jesus says will lie in store for those who do speak ill of other people;

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgement.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” 

Jesus tells us then, that to be angry with another person, to insult them and speak ill of them is just as bad as murdering them. So shedding blood is hateful to God whether we do that in a physical sense or through the harm we do to them through our words. And in these days when so many of our words are the work of our hands through texts and emails and on social media, this is a warning that’s extremely relevant to us and our society.

Of course we need laws to keep order in society and make sure that we don’t descend into anarchy and Jesus himself said he came to fulfil the law, not abolish it. But the very essence of the law, God’s law, is that we shouldn’t treat other people as they do treat us, but that we should treat them as we would like them to treat us. And that means that we shouldn’t shed their blood, in any sense of that expression.

There will be times when we’re the injured party, and there’s nothing wrong with seeking justice when we are. But we shouldn’t mistake revenge for justice, and we shouldn’t take the law into our own hands to get it. There will be times too when we think we’re the injured party but, in reality, aren’t so innocent as we might want to think or claim. So we need to be willing and able to see our own faults as well as the faults of others and not succumb to the temptation to see every problem and dispute we have with others as a case of their guilt and our innocence. And we need to do these things so that we don’t judge others in a way that we wouldn’t like to be judged ourselves. We don’t want to make ourselves hateful to God, so let’s make sure that by neither our deeds nor our words, are our hands, hands that shed blood.
Amen.  

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Propers for Lent 3 Sunday 12th March 2023

Entrance Antiphon
My eyes are ever fixed on the Lord, for he releases my feet from the snare.
O look at me and be merciful, for I am wretched and alone.

The Collect
Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Exodus 17:3-7
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-9
Romans 5:1-2, 5-8
John 4:5-42

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

It’s often said isn’t it, that once trust has been lost in a relationship, it can never be regained. And perhaps one of the surest ways to destroy trust in a relationship is to be dishonest in our dealings with the other person or people in a relationship. So it’s not surprising that in the list of things that the Book of Proverbs tells us are hateful to God because they cause discord between people, a lying tongue is second only to haughtiness, to arrogant pride.

Having said that, just as there’s a difference between pride itself, feeling happy and satisfied about something we’ve done, and haughtiness, feeling superior to others and looking down on them because of what we’ve done, I think we have to make a distinction between ways of being truthful and lying too. And the distinction, I think, can be made in the intention behind what we say, or don’t say as the case may be.

We can sometimes tell lies with good intent. We tell what we call ‘little white lies’ don’t we? And these ‘little white lies’ are things we say that aren’t entirely truthful, or perhaps not truthful at all, but that we say to protect the feelings and well-being of the person or people we’re speaking to. So, for example, If someone had been to the hairdressers and they asked us if we liked their new hairstyle, we might say, “Yes, it really suits you.” We might actually be thinking something along the lines of “What on earth have you done to your hair? You look like you’ve joined the Grenadier Guards. It looks like you’re wearing a bearskin hat!” But we wouldn’t say that because we know it’d hurt the feelings of the person who’d asked us the question. Perhaps particularly if it was obvious to us that the person who’d asked really liked their new hairdo. Or, more seriously, if we knew someone was terminally ill and one of their children asked us what was wrong with their mum or dad, we might say that they’re just a bit poorly at the moment, but they should get better soon. We’d know that was a lie, but we’d say it to protect a child from a truth that was too hard for them to hear and bear. We’d lie with good intent; we’d hide the truth out of care and concern for the person we were speaking to.

And hiding the truth from people in order to protect them, not telling them the whole story because it would be too much for them to hear, is another way we can sometimes be less than truthful with people but with good intent. It might not necessarily be a case of telling a ‘little white lie’, but of telling them only part of the truth, or just not saying anything to them at all, even when we know what the truth really is.

I’m sure there are those who think that, as Christians, we should treat every situation as a court case where we should tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if that was the case, we would make Jesus himself hateful to God. In that part of the Gospel according to St John that we know as the ‘Farewell Discourses’, we hear Jesus’ final teaching and instruction to his disciples. Part of that teaching is a warning of the difficulties and persecutions his disciples would face on account of their faith but even so, Jesus hides some things from them. He tells the disciples,

“I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.”

But even so, Jesus goes on to say,

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

So it’s clear from that, that we can sometimes be less than truthful without being sinful and hateful to God.

Whether what we say that isn’t truthful is hateful to God does then, depend on our intention. And I think the usual ways that our lying tongues are hateful to God is when we lie either about ourselves, or we lie with the intention of leading others astray.

So why do we lie about ourselves? Obviously, one of the usual reasons we lie about ourselves, and probably the main reason we lie about ourselves, is to try and cover up the things we’ve done wrong. We lie in an attempt to hide our sins. This is certainly one way in which our lying tongues are hateful to God because, to put it very simply and bluntly, if we have to lie because we’ve done something we shouldn’t have done, we shouldn’t have done it in the first place should we? If we hadn’t done that thing, or those things, we wouldn’t have to lie to try and hide what we’ve done would we? But we can look at lying to hide our sins in another way too.

Lying to hide our sins from God is a completely futile exercise, because we can’t hide from God. And if we’re lying for that reason then we really haven’t learned anything since the days of Adam and Eve because didn’t they try to hide from God in the Garden of Eden after they’d committed the first sin?

So who are we trying to hide our sins from, other people? In that case aren’t we doing things for the praise of men, as Jesus put it? If we lie to make ourselves look better than we really are to other people, aren’t we putting worldly praise and glory before the things that lead to eternal life? And if we lie to make ourselves look good to other people, isn’t that also rooted in pride and haughtiness?  When we lie about ourselves to cover up our faults and failings, aren’t we then claiming to be something we’re not, claiming to be better than we are and, by implication, better than others? But when we lie about ourselves aren’t we at the same time also implicitly confessing to ourselves that we’re not as good as we should be? Unless of course we start to believe our own lies and really believe that we are much better than we actually are. Perhaps that’s the worst and most hateful aspect of our lying tongues, because if we really do believe our own lies, how can we possibly be penitent and repent? If we believe our own lies about ourselves we probably won’t think we have anything to be penitent for or repent of. If we believe our own lies about ourselves we’ll be in danger of being those people of whom we read in the First Letter of John;

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us…. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Even if we don’t believe our own lies about ourselves though, the lies we tell about ourselves are always intended to deceive others. But we can lie to deceive others in other ways too. We can lie to them in order to make them think and act in ways that we want them to and when we do that, our lying tongues are hateful to God because our lies can lead people astray, they can lead people away from truth, God’s truth, and can lead them into sin.

We know this happens in the world because we see it happening all around us. One very subtle way lies lead us astray is in advertising. Why do advertisers often use famous people to advertise their products? One reason is because a well-known face will draw attention to the product they want to sell but isn’t there also a subtle but false implication that, if we have that thing, we’ll be like that famous person? But, for example, having a certain beverage making machine will not make us into millionaire, multi-award-winning actors.

And I’m sorry fellows, it won’t make us look like said actor, which might be a bit disappointing for the ladies in our lives too! 

A far more serious way that lies can lead us astray though is in politics. The  very essence of politics and of politicians is to convince people of the need to think and act in a certain way. A ‘good’ politician is one who can convince people that their way is the right way, even if doing that involves taking liberties with the truth. But we know what this can lead to. The Nazis convinced the German people that Germany didn’t lose the First World War on the battlefield but because they were betrayed by Jews and Bolsheviks at home. They convinced people that the German people were superior to all other people on earth. They convinced people that the Jews in particular were the cause of all their problems and that if the Jews could be eliminated they, the Germans, would be able to take their rightful place as the ‘Master Race’ and rulers of the world. All lies; but they convinced people that it was all true and we know that it led to what must be one of the most shockingly brutal examples of how lying tongues can lead to the discord between people that is so abhorrent to God.

And sadly this happens in the Church too. At the moment, in the debate about same-sex marriage in the Church of England, we’re hearing various interpretations of what Scripture has to say on the subject which are ranging from simple, direct translations through various interpretations of how these words could be translated and interpreted, to blatant lies about what the words in Scripture mean and even about what the words in Scripture actually are. We know how much discord this is causing in the Church and some of it, at least, is stemming from lying tongues that are simply seeking to push their own particular view on this subject and convince others that their view is the right one, that their view is the truth.

Lying tongues are hateful to God because they are one of the primary causes of discord between people. They must also be hateful to God because they lead people away from the truth, his truth, and so they lead people into error and into sin and prevent them from feeling penitence and repenting of sin. So, let’s try to make sure that we know God’s truth so that we can discern lying tongues and not be led astray by them. And let’s make sure too that our tongues are not lying tongues so that we don’t lead anyone astray.

Amen.  

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Propers for Lent 2 – 5th March 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Remember your mercies, Lord, your tenderness from ages past.
Do not let our enemies triumph over us; O God, deliver Israel from all her distress.

The Collect
Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth,
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
grant to all those who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion,
that they may reject those things that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)       
Genesis 12:1-4
Psalm 33:4-5, 18-20, 22
2 Timothy 1:8-10
Matthew 17:1-9

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         
Genesis 12:1-4
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17                                    
John 3:1-17

In my sermon on Ash Wednesday, I said that the central aspect of our keeping a good Lent is our awareness of our own sinfulness because without that, we won’t feel or show the penitence and repentance that the season calls for. I also said that, one of the things we can use to help us gain an awareness of our own sinfulness is the list of things that are hateful and abhorrent to God that we find in the biblical Book of Proverbs. That’s a list that seems to suggest that there are six things that God hates all of which lead to the most hateful thing of all, and that is discord between people, damage and even a breakdown of relationships all of which reveal a lack of love between us and our neighbours. And in my sermon this morning, I want to look at the first of those things which Proverbs tells us is hateful to God, haughty eyes.

To be haughty is to be arrogant towards other people, to think of ourselves as superior to other people and so, to have haughty eyes is to look down others because of our own pride. That fits very well with the Church’s list of seven deadly sins, because pride is the first sin in that list. But the Book of Proverbs tells us that the worst sin of all is damage to our relationships with others and so I think it’s reasonable to ask whether pride itself is the problem, or what pride can lead us to do that’s the real sin? Is the sin to be proud, or is the sin to allow pride to give us haughty eyes?

To be proud is simply to take pleasure or feel a sense of satisfaction in achievement. And when someone’s achieved something good and noteworthy, especially if they’ve worked long and hard to do it, we say that they can feel rightly proud in what they’ve achieved don’t we? And perhaps there’s nothing wrong with being proud in that sense, as long as that’s as far as it goes. Perhaps we can be proud in that sense without our pride being sinful, and that pride becomes a problem, and a sin, when it affects our relationships with other people.

And pride can do that in lots of ways. But even so, we have to be sure that it is our pride that’s causing the problem. We might, for example, like to talk a lot about our achievements, we might go on a lot about how well we’ve done, and that might damage our relationships with others. But in that case I think the damage is caused because we’re being a bore, we’re tiresome to others because we’re always going on about ourselves and we never change the subject.

And if we have done well, and can be rightly proud in what we’ve done, the damage to our relationships in this case, might be caused not so much by our pride, as by the jealousy of others, which is their sin, the sin of envy.

To be clear about the sin of pride, I think we have to look at this list in the Book of Proverbs; pride is a sin when it leads us to do what is hateful to God, and that is when pride causes us to have haughty eyes. In other words, pride is sinful when it causes us to think that we’re better than others, when it causes us to be arrogant and feel superior to others, to take an ‘I’ve done and you haven’t, therefore I’m better than you’ attitude towards others. And pride is sinful when it causes us to look down on others and be dismissive of their achievements and their abilities.

And we can allow pride to damage our relationships in other ways too. We can be proud of what someone else has done, and that can damage our relationships with others because it can lead to favouritism, or at least to the feeling in others that we do have favourites. This can and does happen in families. Parents can be proud of their children’s achievements but if one child achieves more than another, parents can be proud of that child but view another as something of a disappointment to them. It happens doesn’t it. And when it does happen, it can lead to favouritism, or in the minds of those children who haven’t achieved so much that their parents do favour one child over another. And how much damage has been caused to family relationships by situations and feelings like these? 

So allowing pride to give us the haughty eyes that are so hateful to God, can cause us to do something which is even more hateful to God, and that’s damage our relationships with others. But if having haughty eyes can damage our relationships with other people, it can damage our relationship with God too.

As Christians, we believe that all things come from God, and that includes our talents and abilities. But, when we’ve achieved something noteworthy, something of which we can be rightly proud, how often do we remember to give thanks to God for having the ability to have achieved that thing? Aren’t we far more likely to simply pat ourselves on the back and think that we’ve achieved what we have by our own hard work and ingenuity? We might have been clever and inventive in achieving what we have, and we might have worked very hard to achieve it, but didn’t God play a part in our success too? We might have been clever and inventive and worked hard to achieve our success, but where did the raw ability and talent that we’ve worked so hard to put to good use come from in the first place? And if we say, as so many people do, that they had no natural ability at something but rather had to work hard to learn how to do what they’ve been so successful at, still, where did their ability to learn come from? We can be so self-congratulatory when we’ve achieved something of which we can be rightly proud that we forget to thank God for the ability, and opportunity, to have been able to achieve what we have. And in that case, our haughty eyes are directed towards God himself, and we damage our relationship with God because our pride cause us to be unthankful to God.

So while pride, in itself, may not necessarily be a sin, the haughty eyes that pride can give us is a sin because this is hateful to God and leads us to something that is even more hateful to God, damage to our relationship with him and with our neighbours. But if we want a better way, a way we can be rightly proud but without succumbing to the sin of having haughty eyes, we can look for inspiration to the relationship between Jesus and his Father.

Our Gospel this morning is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. This happens immediately after Jesus had been baptised and at his baptism, Jesus was revealed as the Messiah, the Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and by the voice from heaven which declared, 

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Don’t those sound like the words of a proud parent? But, if Jesus was the Father’s beloved Son, a Son with whom he was well pleased, does that mean the Father loved his other children, in other words us, any less? No, he very reason he sent his Son into the world was because he loved us so much. So if we’re ever tempted to think more highly of one person than another because their achievements have pleased us more, we might want to remember the story of Jesus’ baptism. Or the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration when the Father was heard to say the same thing of his Son.

And as we read this morning’s Gospel, isn’t the way in which Jesus resisted temptation something of which he, as a human being, could have been rightly proud, perhaps in the way we might feel rightly proud at Easter for having stuck to our Lenten discipline through the whole of Lent? But as we look at this Gospel, we see that at each temptation, Jesus turns to God.

Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding so no doubt he could have turned stones into bread too. He could have turned stones into bread and been quite happy and self-satisfied, but he didn’t, he turned to God;

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Jesus could have shown the people of Israel exactly who he was and achieved their faith and obedience in a very dramatic way that would have drawn attention to himself and saved him the agony of the Cross. But instead he turned to God;

“‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

And Jesus could have lorded it over the world and all people, but again, he turned to God;

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”

And so, if we’re ever tempted to let pride turn into something worse; if we’re ever tempted to let something we can be rightly proud of give us haughty eyes towards God or anyone else, we might want to remember the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. We might want to remember Jesus’ example of putting God first, of remembering the part God plays in everything we do, including the things we can be rightly proud of. And we might want to remember too Jesus’ example of not letting what we’ve done, and have the ability to do, damage our relationships with our neighbour by leading us to think of ourselves as better than others and looking down on them, but of loving them even if that means playing down what we can do and the achievements of which we can be rightly proud.

Jesus, had a lot to be rightly proud of but he never showed haughty eyes to anyone. In fact, Jesus humbled himself before God his Father and before his neighbour, even those who showed haughty eyes to him, those who thought they knew better than him, those who dismissed his achievements, those who thought they were better and greater and more powerful than him. And he did all that simply so that their relationship with God could be put right. So, as we go through Lent, let’s try to think about how our own pride might have damaged and be damaging our relationships with God and our neighbours and then let’s try to be less haughty in the way we look at them.

 Amen.

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Propers for Lent 1      26^th February 2023

Entrance Antiphon
When he calls to me, I will answer; I will rescue him and give him honour.
Long life and contentment will be his.

The Collect
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)         Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7

                                    Psalm 51:3-6, 12-14, 17

                                    Romans 5:12-19

                                    Matthew 4:1-11

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

                                    Psalm 32

                                    Romans 5:12-19

                                    Matthew 4:1-11